PATHWAYS TO LITERACY

该申请在较大的NICHD早期儿童保育研究中提出了一个特定的子研究。这项拟议的研究将检查儿童中期读写能力和认知发展的性质和来源。本研究采用了一个复杂的、多层次的、互动的框架，从生态学的角度出发，将重点研究儿童、家庭和学校因素对一年级至五年级儿童认知和读写技能发展的独立和综合影响。拟议研究的一个独特特点是努力开发分析和方法策略，以在线捕获对认知结果的多种影响来源的相互作用。发展“路径”或“轨迹”的概念被详细阐述，并被用作描述发展变化的复杂本质和在早期上学时期形成发展变化的力量的框架。此外，该提案试图利用通路概念来阐明当前认知发展中的三个重要主题：领域特异性，稳定性和变化以及风险弹性。在每一种情况下，我们都认为，随着时间的推移，绘制发展路径将有助于理解哪些认知和识字技能作为学校教育经历的功能（领域特异性）而发展，哪些技能随着时间的推移而表现出相对稳定性（稳定性vs.变化），以及风险和保护因素（风险复原力）的复杂相互作用如何产生有害或有益的结果。总的来说，拟议的研究将促进对小学时期认知和读写能力增长的性质和来源的理解和研究。

The application proposes a specific substudy within the larger, NICHD Study of Early Child Care. The proposed research will examine the nature and sources of literacy and cognitive development during the middle childhood years. Utilizing a complex, multi-level, interactive framework adopted from ecological perspectives, the research will focus specifically on the independent and combined influences of child, family and schooling factors in shaping growth of cognitive and literacy skills from first to fifth grade. A unique feature of the proposed research is the effort to develop analytic and methodological strategies for capturing on-line the interplay of multiple sources of influence on cognitive outcomes. The concept of a developmental 'pathway' or 'trajectory' is elaborated and utilized as a framework for describing the intricate nature of developmental change and the forces shaping it over the early school years. In addition, the proposal seeks to utilize the pathway notion to illuminate three currently important topics in cognitive development: domain-specificity, stability and change and risk-resilience. In each case, it will be argued that charting developmental pathways over time will help to understand which cognitive and literacy skills develop and which do not as a function of schooling experiences (domain-specificity), which skills show relative stability over time (stability vs. change) from the early to later school years and how harmful or beneficial outcomes are produced by the complex interactions of risk and protective factors (risk-resilience). Overall, the proposed research will advance understanding and study of the nature and sources of cognitive and literacy growth during the elementary school years.